


Everybody Wants to be a Cat

by bear_bell



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Coping, Humor, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark pre-slash, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation, Team as Family, mentions of animal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29567085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bear_bell/pseuds/bear_bell
Summary: After the superhero civil war, the Rogue Avengers are back in the US and eager to right their wrongs and make amends. When they arrive at Stark Tower to speak with Tony, Steve and the others are disheartened to learn that in their absence, Tony Stark has been kidnapped. If they want to make their apologies, talk things out, and work to rebuild their relationship as a team (and hopefully as a family), they first have to track down Tony and save his life.And as if that's not bad enough, they realize that while they were gone Tony's replaced them with a new team, new friends, and a cat.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 137





	Everybody Wants to be a Cat

_“- seen his AIs and how they work in the past. How anyone can support or condone the public release of such technology is baffling.”_

_“Ultron only happened because alien technology and magic got involved. The fact of the matter is that one of the reasons people were so scared of Ultron was because he was an otherworldly threat disguised as technology from Earth. Tony Stark was - IS - the only authority in the world on artificial intelligence, and at the time of Ultron’s creation, not enough was publicly known about the limitations of AI tech for people to understand that Ultron was the product of alien forces. Tony Stark has been creating these entities for longer than most people have been aware that they were even a possibility, though. And Tony Stark’s AI is nothing like Ultron.”_

_“And here I say - do we really want to place ourselves in a position where we so heavily rely on the creations of a guy who is so horribly inept at human interaction that he’s spent most of his life building friends for himself?”_

“Turn it off,” Steve demanded.

Sam did as he commanded even as Natasha said, “Tony can take care of himself, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve ground out. “I _know_ he can. I’m just… I’m sick of listening to people bad-mouth him.”

Bucky placed a heavy, comforting hand on Steve’s knee as Wanda said, “They’re bad mouthing him because they’re _used_ to bad mouthing him. I had the same problem, in the beginning. I'd blamed him for everything wrong with my life for so long, even after I recognized he _wasn't_ responsible for my pain I would notice his every misstep and mistake because I was used to watching for them. It was hard to be nice to Tony sometimes even though I knew it was wrong and he never behaved unkindly to me.”

Steve took a deep breath as he tried to remember that one of the commentators _had_ been speaking in Tony's defense in regards to Ultron - no one had done that before Wanda stood up and confessed her part in Ultron’s creation, though. It should have happened sooner, but it was nice to see more and more people acknowledging the truth of Tony and the situation.

“Actually,” Clint put in, “that panel was largely supportive of Stark. They were arguing the numbers - StarkTech’s new AI was responsible for preventing five suicides - _yesterday_. She prevented several suicides, a dozen car accidents, a parental kidnapping, and it even alerted a kid’s parents and first responders after a toddler fell into a pool. A bunch of people are making noise about Big Brother, I know, but SUNDAY’s the kind of big brother people _want_ to keep around and leave responsible for taking care of their kids.”

“Hey, have you seen that video of the parents who acted like they _were_ going to leave SUNDAY to raise and take care of their kids?” Sam chuckled. “She lectured them, pulled up a bunch of studies about early child development and the benefits of interaction with real people, and then SUNDAY began trolling them for their poor parenting choices. SUNDAY is _on_ it, and people understand that she’s here to help. People like that guy who was talking shit on Tony? Those kind of people are assholes, but they’re always going to be around.”

“Sure,” Steve sullenly agreed. “But they wouldn’t have so much fodder against him if we didn’t hand it to them.”

At this, the others fell silent.

The Rouge Avengers, as some people had taken to calling them, had been somewhat surprised at the vitriol Tony received from the media and public while they were hiding in Wakanda. It hadn’t been long before the team realized the reasons for the hatred against Tony - he was simply the most visible of any of the Avengers, and when any of the Avengers made a mistake, it was Tony’s face which the media plastered to the mistake. The team had done what they could to lighten the pressure on the man while they were in Wakanda and after returning home. The constant criticism and negative commentary of Tony had really lightened up since then. They had been back in the US and actively Avenging for nearly two months, though, and they still hadn’t seen Tony face-to-face.

“We’re being cowards,” Steve decided after a moment.

“Yeah, well, how does someone apologize for something like the things we’ve done?” Wanda muttered.

“He’s Tony Stark,” Steve pointed out. “If there’s anyone who knows about making mistakes and then trying to fix them, it’s him. He has every right to never forgive me-”

“Us,” Bucky put in.

“-but if I - we - don’t try, then _never_ will be a certainty, and I want to at least _try_ to make it up to him. He won’t give us a chance if we don’t _do_ _something_.”

Sighing, Clint stood from the couch. “I’ll go warm up the quinjet,” he declared.

“I’ll arrange for a hotel,” Natasha offered. “Just in case we’re not welcome at the Tower.”

“I’ll give him some warning that we’re on our way,” Sam declared.

* * *

Ever since the new StarkTech phone had been released with the soft, gentle, friendly SUNDAY included and available for public use, the whole “Tony Stark building himself some friends” shtick had become a world-wide running joke. When confronted directly about it, Tony laughed and poked fun of himself, nothing less than his usual charming, smooth-talking self. Steve was sure the jokes and comments were getting to the man, however.

When the Avengers arrived at Stark Tower and were immediately granted access to the Avenger floors, Steve wondered if they only gained entrance so easily because Tony was trying to make a point or prove something or-

No. Tony wouldn’t do that. Not with them. Not anymore.

“He’s not here,” Natasha immediately recognized as the elevator let them out on the top floor and her eyes darted around the penthouse. “He hasn’t been here for… at least three days.”

“Okay. But _what the hell is that?_ ” Clint asked as he pointed accusingly across the room.

Slowly stepping towards the lounge area in the middle of the living room, Sam said, “Don’t you and your family live on a farm? I thought you would have cats all over the place out there.”

“Sure. At my farm, in the country, where there are a whole bunch of other dirty animals as well. Here? In Tony Stark’s living room? What the hell?”

“Maybe he _did_ want a new friend,” Steve said absently as he went to study the little fluff ball. 

“It’s Stark’s cat for sure,” Sam wryly chuckled.

Steve had to crack a bit of a smile himself - of all of the chairs and cushions in the room for the cat to lounge on, it was perched atop a flat, stiff tablet which had been haphazardly discarded on the couch.

“Hey, pretty little catloaf,” Clint hummed as he moved closer to the couch, and the cat’s light green eyes blinked open, it’s head rising from where it had been resting against its chest. “Sorry to interrupt your nap - jeez, you’re gorgeous.” To the others, he explained, “She looks like an American shorthair-”

“He,” Wanda interjected with a grin as the cat stood up and stretched, his back arching. “Hey, cutie. Come here-”

As soon as the woman stepped towards the creature, it bolted.

“Tech friendly, but not people friendly. Definitely Tony Stark’s cat,” Clint dryly intoned.

Natasha pinched Clint’s ear.

“Ow! I’m not saying Tony’s not good with people, and I’m not agreeing with those assholes who say he’s incapable of making friends or whatever!” Clint cried. “I’m just saying - Tony prefers working with machines than he does with people, and its funny that he got himself a cat who seems to feel the same!”

With a sigh, Steve called, “FRIDAY?”

“What can I do for you, Captain?” the female AI greeted. Steve found that the distinct lack of pointed bitterness in FRIDAY's tone made him strangely uneasy. JARVIS never would have greeted them so jovially after everything which had happened and how they had behaved while initially disputing the Accords.

“Is Tony here? Did he get our message when we said we were dropping in?”

“The Vision received your message, and he’s on his way to the tower,” FRIDAY replied.

“Vision?” Wanda asked, perking up a little at the prospect of seeing the android again.

“Wait, Vision?” Steve asked. “FRIDAY, where’s Tony?”

“Boss has been missing for the last three days, I’m afraid.”

This statement resulted in immediate chaos. 

* * *

“What happened?” Steve demanded to know as soon a Vision arrived.

“Captain, please have a seat,” the Android tiredly replied.

Steve did as commanded - mostly because he knew that Vision didn’t sleep, or eat, and the only way he got tired was _emotionally_.

“Vision, we want to help,” Wanda told her old friend. “ _Please_.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you to help,” he told her, making it perfectly clear that there had been a point in time when he _hadn’t_ wanted any such thing. “However, we’ve hit a dead end. Until any new leads or clues come in, I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do. The others are returning to the tower after their own attempts as we speak.”

“What happened?” Steve asked again.

“Tony was taken while entering the tower. He’d just returned from taking Reginald for a walk-”

“Tony renamed him Screw Bit,” Rhodes called as the elevator doors opened and revealed the other members of Tony’s new team.

“I thought his name was Geebee?” Hope Van Dyne asked.

“Eebee,” Scott corrected as he followed the others in, giving a half-hearted wave to Steve and the others by way of greeting as he trailed after the woman.

“Short for Electric Boogaloo,” Spider-Man said as he flipped out of the crowded elevator, sounding young and tired and worried through his mask.

“Tony didn’t even have the damn cat long enough to properly name him,” Rhodes sighed as he started towards the kitchen with a shake of his head.

“Reginald has been living in the tower for three months,” Vision argued.

“Three months of not knowing whether the thing would survive, and its name isn’t _Reginald_ , Vision,” Scott said with a sigh as he collapsed into one of the recliners. “You’re the only person who ever called him that, and Tony made a horrible face at it every damn time.”

“Reginald is a perfectly respectable name-”

“You named yourself _The Vision_ ,” Rhodes called as he took a carton of food from the fridge. “You don’t get any vote in the naming of _anything_.”

“James!” Steve snapped, and Bucky flinched where he sat beside Steve on the couch.

“We’ve figured out that Tony was taken by AIM,” Rhodes tonelessly reported as he came back into the living room. “Besides that - we’ve got nothing.”

* * *

Bucky enjoyed the city - far more than he had liked Wakanda or staying at the Avengers Compound in upstate New York. There was constant life in the city. People were always awake, there was always noise and movement - It didn’t calm him by any means, but it made his paranoia feel justified. At the compound, every breeze blowing through the trees and every bump in the night was an unknown enemy waiting to attack. In the city, there were no imagined people in the shadows. There were just regular people in the shadows, real and present and probably not planning to attack, but _possibly_ planning to attack.

Apparently, there were also cats.

“You can’t settle down, either?” Bucky asked when he realized that the glow coming from beneath one of the chairs in the living area wasn’t a bomb, but the reflection of light off of the cat’s eyes. The glowing eyes narrowed as Bucky spoke. “I got’cha,” he murmured. “I hear you’ve had it pretty rough, too.”

The poor thing had been experimented on just a surely as Bucky had - not for the same reasons, of course, but Colonel Rhodes had made it perfectly clear that the cat hadn’t had an easy time of it, regardless of the intentions behind the medical procedures it had endured.

The shelter the cat came from said that he and several other cats had been rescued from a basement they’d been kept locked in for over a year. The lot of them had been malnourished, sick, and ugly (and therefore difficult to find homes for). Eebee or Reginald or whatever his name was had been the scrawniest, the sickest, and the last to be adopted from the rescued litter. However, on his way to his _forever home_ , some asshole who called himself Doom had unleashed a bunch of robots on the city. 

The teenage girl who had adopted the cat was severely injured during the attack - mainly because she was working to protect the cat rather than herself. She had used her own body to shield the cat from damage. She’d only gotten out of the line of fire when Iron Man spotted her, picked her up and carried her away from the battle. Tony had gotten her to a hospital, but the girl had refused treatment at first, insisting that someone help her cat, instead. 

Tony had managed to track down a veterinarian within the hospital, a young man who had accompanied his father to his cancer treatments that day. As soon as she saw that someone was helping her feline friend, the girl had immediately calmed and consented to receiving treatment herself. However, there had been complications during surgery, and the girl had gone into a coma. She never woke up and she died from her injuries three days later. 

_Tony was pretty messed up about it_ , Rhodes had explained. _That girl almost died in his arms over a mangy ugly cat, and Tony thought that if he could keep the cat alive, she would fight to stay alive too, or something. Then, when she died, it was like he thought the cat had to survive because she’d been killed protecting it._

Either way, the cat had been tortured and abused for most of its life, then it was caught up in a horrific attack, and then it had undergone a bunch of experimental medical procedures which _probably_ wouldn’t have been allowed if it had been a human and not an animal the procedures were being performed on. The result: the cat had been pronounced fit and healthy only seven days before Tony Stark had been taken.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Bucky told he cat as he slouched against the couch he’d been trying to fall asleep on for the previous hour. 

The only movement the cat made in response was a blink of its eyes.

“ _I_ won’t hurt you,” Bucky promised. Then, just to be sure, he allowed his vision to blur and he focused on the dark weight which was ever present in the back of his mind. After a moment, he reported, “That _other_ part of me wouldn’t hurt you either. They only ever made him fight dogs - guard dogs, you know? It’s damn good that Stark didn’t get sentimental about a rottweiler or something. That might've been a problem. _You_ don’t hafta worry, though.”

Bucky wasn’t sure if it was his soft, gentle tone, his nonthreatening slouch on the sofa, or the dregs of milk remaining at the bottom of the bowl which he’d discarded on the coffee table after finishing a cereal snack, but the cat eventually crept out from beneath the chair and took small, hesitant steps towards Bucky.

He sat completely still until the cat jumped on top of the coffee table in front of him, inched towards the bowl sitting near Bucky, and then began to lap at the drops of milk which remained at the very bottom.

“There, you see?” Bucky asked, even as the cat froze and tensed up at the sound of his voice. “I won’t hurt you. Lord Almighty, you’re jumpier than Stevie ever was when he was a little shrimp. That’s okay, though. You’ve been hurt. You’ve got a right to be nervous. Especially around me.”

When the cat had finished licking at the bowl, Bucky watched as it sat back on its haunches and returned to watching him.

The cat was a pretty thing - there were still short patches of fur on his sides which were growing back after his final surgery, but the black patterns in his gray fur made the cat look like a miniature, dark furred tiger. If he wasn’t so small, and if his face weren’t so round, he might look rather fierce. Behind him, his tail flicked back and forth, making Bucky feel like he was about to be pounced on.

Getting attacked by that little guy would probably be far more pleasant than most of the fights Bucky had been in.

“Oh, right, I promised to show you my arm,” Bucky remembered. The cat tensed as he moved to unzip his hoodie and pull his shirt over his head, but it didn’t run for cover under a chair. Bucky continued to speak quietly as he moved. “See? It’s not so bad as _your_ injuries - missing a limb isn’t fun, but if there’s anything Hydra taught me it’s that there are far worse things which can be done to a person than cutting off a dead limb. They fucked with me plenty, but when I think about some of the experiments they did on _other_ people…” Bucky shuddered. “It doesn’t hurt like it used to, at least. The docs in Wakanda knew what they were doing. Steve says that your guy Tony could make me something better than the prosthetic Princess Shuri gave me, but we’ve agreed that we’re not gonna bother him about that. Tony wrote me a letter apologizing for how things went down in Siberia, but I wasn’t actually upset about what he did to my arm. I _thought_ I would be upset, but once it was gone I was only relieved. Hydra built that thing, and it was meant to be a weapon. I like the arm Shuri made me in Wakanda. It’s _just_ an arm, although I’ll need something more resilient if I want to be an Avenger and go into the field. When the time comes, I think I’ll go back to Wakanda to get outfitted instead of asking Stark. He’s done more than enough after helping me get my head straight and clearing all our names to get us back to the US. Stevie says that I’m his best friend, but Tony’s the best person he knows, and he doesn’t deserve most of the shit people give him.”

The more Bucky talked, the more the cat relaxed. Eventually, it padded across the table, gave a little hop to the couch, and started sniffing at Bucky.

* * *

It had been a long, _long_ night, but they’d figured out a plan.

Scott and Natasha would use their connections with the criminal underworld to put feelers out for AIM. Rhodes declared that the military wouldn’t be any help - They believed AIM to be gone along with Killian after the Mandarin incident. Hope said the organization had operated like a legitimate business during its heyday, however, and more likely than not what remained of the organization would continue operating in a manner which was familiar to them, so she would ask around about up-and-coming research facilities which were ace on paper but morally questionable in regards to the projects they pushed.

Beyond that, there was little they could do.

They had watched the security footage of the kidnapping over a dozen times to see if they could find any clues as to the identities of the the people to have taken Tony, and where, and for what reasons.

“They knew what they were doing,” Steve finally determined. “They didn’t only have a plan - they had a _well rehearsed_ plan.”

“As in they’ve done this before?” Sam asked.

Clint’s fingers snapped. “That’s _exactly_ it,” he declared. “I kept getting distracted by Tony Stark walking a _cat_ on a _leash_ -”

“Didn’t we all?” Steve asked, because yeah, seeing that had been strange even by New York standards.

“-but those guys hardly paused. They’re well practiced enough at kidnapping that when things went sideways, they were able to improvise. I mean, they took Tony Stark in front of his own building in the middle of the day, but between this guy on the right side of the frame whose about to get into a fistfight with a protester and that car which looks like an interactive nightmare on wheels driving down the street… There were a lot of distractions which they didn’t pay any attention to, and those guys were quick.”

“Is that a… _beam_ that they’re hitting him with?” Wanda asked.

“We think so,” Hope replied. “No one on the street or in the building saw any light come from the gun or hit Tony - certainly nothing so bright or flashy like what appears on the security footage.”

“You think the cameras picked up something which wasn’t visible to the naked eye?” Clint confirmed.

“There’s no other explanation, really - the weapon didn’t appear to injure Tony - certainly not with the way he was thrashing around while they were getting him into the van. When we slowed it down and enhanced the image, the weapon looks like it might have misfired. We suspect it was some sort of prototype immobilization beam which didn’t do the job, but those guys got what they wanted regardless.”

“Which means that it’s unlikely he’s _still_ unharmed,” Steve darkly concluded.

Sam placed a hand on Steve’s soldier. “Hey, man. We’ve got an idea of where to go from here. It’s been a long day, so let’s go get some sleep and look at this with fresh eyes in the morning.” His eyes darting from Vision to Rhodes, Sam slowly said, “We’ve arranged for rooms at a hotel-”

“Did your passcodes into the tower still work?” Rhodes dryly asked.

“What? I -yeah, but-”

“Then I guess you’re welcome to set up camp here for the evening,” Rhodes finished.

The invitation certainly didn’t _seem_ welcoming, but it was a foot through the door - literally. _Tony didn’t change our passcodes_ , Steve thought as he stood and wandered from the conference room. _He didn’t lock us out. Does that mean he might-_

As the rest of Steve’s teammates moved to wander to the guest quarters on the floor below, Steve paused in the living area.

Bucky had ducked out of the discussion when their arguing about a course of action began to make him jumpy. He was always a bit high-strung in new, unfamiliar environments. Steve thought they would need to find their quarters and that Bucky would need to do an inspection of the entire floor three times over before he felt safe and comfortable enough to sleep.

Yet there he was, spread out on the couch in Tony Stark’s living room, his shirt on backwards and his hoodie bunched up under his head as a pillow, dead to the world.

The cat was sleeping with him. It was in the exact same “catloaf” position as it had been the first time Steve had seen him, only now he was lying atop Bucky’s metal arm instead of a tablet. 

Of _course_ Tony would take a shine to a strange animal. A strange animal who forewent human warmth in favor of cold hard metal. Steve couldn’t help but notice that not a bit of the cat spilled from the arm and onto Bucky’s warm body.

Steve wished he was that brave. The scientists in Wakanda had given Bucky a new metal arm - it wasn’t the same weapon which had killed people or had tried to hurt Steve and his friends. Steve hadn’t been able to bring himself to touch it, though. 

He was kind of jealous that a little cat had no such issue.

* * *

Screw Nut, or Eebee, or Reginald, or whatever name any particular person liked that day, was a little terror, the Avengers quickly determined.

It was day four of their search for Tony - an entire week since the man had been kidnapped - and the tower’s guests were huddled in the kitchen, nervously eyeing the little ball of mania.

“He was never like this before, I swear,” Spider-Man insisted from the corner of the kitchen ceiling where he was watching, and not doing a damn thing to keep the amusement from his voice.

“He was either injured or recovering from surgery before, and he lacked the ability _and_ the energy to move of his own violation,” Vision speculated from his place leaning against the counter on the far side of the room.

“Do you think he’s, like… guarding it for Tony or something?” Clint asked with a furrowed brow as he wearily eyed the cat.

“Mr. Stark called him Coffee Bean for a day,” Spider-Man revealed. “We had to nix that one because of how vocal he got about his love of-”

“We said we weren’t talking about that ever again,” Hope pointedly interrupted. If Steve hadn’t possessed enhanced hearing, he wouldn’t have caught her muttering, “I _hate_ that we had to talk to lawyers about age of consent laws because Tony couldn’t stop talking dirty to his cat about coffee while the kid was around,” into her mug of tea. 

“I bet he just misses Mr. Stark, and that he hopes that associating himself with Mr. Stark’s favorite food group might-”

The kitchen door opened as Rhodey walked in. When the cat’s eyes flickered to him, Wanda attempted to make a grab for the coffee pot, but she wasn’t fast enough. The cat made a sound which Steve hadn’t thought possible for such a cute little thing to produce and he took a swipe at Wanda with his claws.

“It was just a warning,” Wanda announced as she inspected her hand. “He didn’t break any skin.”

“Leave him alone,” Bucky grouched as he came into the kitchen behind Rhodey. 

“He’s sitting on top of the coffee, man!” Clint howled in protest. 

“It’s warm,” Bucky agreed as he walked over, used his metal hand to snatch the cat from his perch, and cradled him against his chest as Bucky began to make himself a bowl of cereal with his right hand. After pouring the milk, he ran one of his metal fingers along the rim of the jug before capping it and putting it away in the fridge. The cat happily licked at the drop of milk left dripping from Bucky’s metal finger as the man settled into a seat at the counter to eat his breakfast.

There was a minor celebration as everyone procured their coffee from the newly freed pot and then scrounged up some breakfast.

“Stark’s cat is a little shit,” Clint complained as he unwrapped a protein bar. “I’m surprised Tony has any patience for the brat.”

“I bet Tony’s great with him,” Steve sadly replied. “He’s always been good at taking things which are… off… and making them work. I wish I’d remembered that earlier, while we were dealing with the Accords.”

“For fuck’s sake, Steve,” Sam sighed. “Don’t start mourning him before he’s even lost!”

“I’m not _mourning_ him. We’ll get him back. I know we will! I just… I regret that we weren’t in the position to help - to do more. If I had just let him talk for five minutes, we would have _been here_ when he needed us-”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Rhodey commanded from his place at the stove. “That won’t help find Tony, and that sure as hell won’t make him forgive you. You need to be sorry to him, not sorry for yourself.”

Before Steve could open his mouth to argue again, Bucky elbowed him in the side.

“Cool it, man,” Bucky quietly commanded, his voice low. “The colonel’s best friend is missing and in the hands of the enemy. He’s gonna do everything in his power to find his friend and make sure he’s safe, everyone else be damned. He doesn’t care about you or how you feel right now, okay? It’s the same way you were when I was in trouble. You want to help? Then don’t antagonize him. Let him do his thing and process his emotions, okay?”

Steve took three deep breaths, then slouched into his seat. “You’re right. Thanks, Buck. You always did know how to knock some sense into me.”

“I’ll do it with your own shield if I have to,” Bucky agreed with a grin - one of _his_ grins. Not the hesitant, twisted twitch of the lips which he’d been treating Steve with for the last few months, but one of the bright, happy grins he used to grant Steve.

“We’re joking about that, now?” Steve asked with an unsure smile of his own. 

“If ya don’t laugh, ya cry. And I’m sick of watching you mope around,” Bucky replied with a small, sad smile of his own. The words he spoke were something Bucky’s mother used to say whenever he and Steve got into fights when they were children. It made more sense than when people said _Let bygones be bygones_.

 _Bucky’s going to have a good day today_ , Steve decided. Good days for Bucky were few and far between, and they _never_ started out with a smile like the one Steve just saw, so he was committed to making a good day happen.

Then, Hope sat up straight in her chair, looked up from the tablet she was poking at, and declared, “They’ve got a lead. Scott found some long-term drug trials being offered to people living homeless on the streets. The trials are being conducted by several medical professionals associated with one of the organizations I flagged as suspicious.”

“They’re experimenting on Tony?!” Rhodes asked - if he’d had super strength, the metal spatula he held in his hand would be bent double.

Hope shook her head. “It’s highly unlikely. The people who kidnapped Tony were very careful about it. We wouldn’t have realized they were associated with AIM at all if Scott hadn’t been able to read their lips on the security footage. If the people running the operation Scott found were also involved in Tony’s kidnapping, they wouldn’t be looking for volunteers to participate in drug trials. They’d simply pick them up off the street and make sure there was no trail left behind whatsoever. If they work for a company which condones inappropriate medical research, though, it’s likely they also condone inappropriate tech research. Natasha’s going in undercover to see if it’s a real lead. Scott’s going to keep looking for other leads.”

Steve let out a long, slow breath. “So we have to keep waiting.”

“Yes,” Hope succinctly replied. “It’s something, though. We’ve got a chance of finding him.”

As Steve’s hands clenched into fists, Bucky bumped his shoulder with him. “You’ve had plenty of practice with waiting,” he said, trying for the same light-hearted tone he’d used earlier but falling short. “This should be nothing.”

 _Bucky’s going to have a good day today_ , Steve firmly reminded himself.

Inhaling and exhaling twice more, Steve looked at his friend and asked, “Want to go wait in the gallery?”

“The what?” Bucky asked, the tension leaving his expression to be replaced by confusion.

“The art gallery,” Steve explained. “Ms. Potts - Tony’s CEO - she’s built an amazing collection. Some of it’s on display in a gallery on the twelfth floor.”

“I’ve heard a lot of things about Stark Tower, but I’ve never heard about any _art gallery_ ,” Clint said from the other side of the room.

“That’s because it’s the _Virginia Potts Gallery of Fine Art_ , not the _Stark Display of Randomly Arranged Oil Smears and Repulsor Blasts_ ,” Rhodes put in. “The twelfth floor was Pepper’s project, and Tony wasn’t allowed within ten feet of it. He almost wasn’t invited to attend the opening galla, even though he was the main benefactor and it was his money which purchased over half of the collection.”

With a suitable distraction arranged, the group finished up their breakfast and made their way to the lower floors of the tower.

“Did you get a floor?” Spider-Man asked Rhodey as they all crowded into the elevator.

“Kinda - Happy and I had to share. Our floor is the most popular, though. My half’s an air and space museum. Happy’s is an historical car collection.”

Bucky raised his good hand, “I vote we check out the cars instead of the art.”

“My man!” Clint cheered. When he offered Bucky a high-five, Steve delighted in the fact that Bucky didn’t flinch away or pause in returning the gesture.

Steve also noticed that the cat was still tucked under Bucky’s metal arm.

* * *

It was day nine, and it was one of Bucky’s bad days. 

They had tracked down three bad leads, but Hope had found one which she thought seemed especially promising, and Natasha thought so, too. For this one, Scott and Natasha were teaming up and going in together.

Bucky was growing tense, however. 

Most of their leads were found because of _inappropriate medical practices_ of some kind, and the more it happened, the more likely it became that _inappropriate medical practices_ were what was being done to Tony. 

“They used to find this kind of stuff all the time at SHIELD,” Clint quietly explained. “A lot of it is people who can’t get funding through appropriate channels. Some of it is idiots being idiots. Most of it was caught by government organizations before they could go off the rails and become SHIELD’s problem.”

“But AIM is old hat at this, and they know how to get away with some serious shit,” Bucky lowly replied, because it _had to be said_. All of this _feel good, hope for the best, let’s do group hugs when we feel bad_ shit was all very nice and comforting, but Bucky _knew_ what sorts of horrible things could be done to people in a short amount of time, and he knew how nasty desperate, obsessive, power-hungry people could get.

“And Tony’s a survivor,” Clint rejoined, just as solemnly. “He and I have gone pro at pissing each other off. Two people with big egos and short tempers will do that to each other. But one dig I’ve _never_ been able to take at him is on his will and ability to survive. He’s been played by people, sure, but Tony Stark is one of the most adaptive fuckers I’ve ever seen. Once he knows someone’s game, he changes all the rules and takes control. It’s what he does. Nothing can keep him down. Not when people fuck with his mind or his body.”

“Not even then,” Wanda agreed, her eyes hard. “And the people who fuck with his head? They have to learn what Tony Stark is capable of the hard way.”

Clint and Wanda had said their peace, and they had taken their turn at trying to calm him down and keep Bucky from the edge.

Bucky figured Sam would be sent to counsel him next. Steve had wasted his turn earlier that morning with the aforementioned hugs and feel-good encouragement. Unless Steve decided to sic various members of the New Avengers on him, then-

The elevator gave a ping. 

Bucky had been informed that the elevator only pinged when someone who wasn't an Avengerwas on their way up. It was FRIDAY’s signal that _someone who doesn’t belong here_ was approaching the Avengers’ floors without letting anyone on the elevator _know_ that others were being informed.

Was it AIM, coming back to steal more people who were important to Bucky’s new friends? Or was it-

Colonel Rhodes strode past Bucky just as the elevator doors opened.

A middle-aged couple stepped out of the elevator, the man carrying a box in his hands.

“Oh, I - Hello, Colonel Rhodes,” the woman said. “I thought… I thought Mr. Stark would be here?”

“There’s been an emergency,” Rhodes quietly explained. “I’m afraid he won’t be able to meet with you today.”

“I understand,” the woman quietly murmured.

“I’m not sure where Screw Nut is, but I can try to track him down.”

“That would be wonderful,” the woman said with an eager nod.

“Come on in, have a seat,” Rhodes told them. “I’ll see if I can figure out where he’s run off to.”

“Thank you,” the man said with a nod as the couple came into the common area.

Near the couches, the couple paused, staring at Bucky. It took him a moment to realize that he was looming near the windows, staring them down with one of his more intimidating _You don’t belong_ gazes.

“Sorry,” he immediately told the pair as he tried to shake off his mood. “I’ve been on edge today. I didn’t mean to make you nervous. I’m Bucky. Bucky Barnes.”

“Ah,” the man hummed, coughing awkwardly. “I see. Um, I’m Richard, and this is my wife Vicky. We’re just… we’re here to see our daughter’s cat…”

“Oh,” Bucky said slowly. “Oh, I… I’m sorry for your loss,” he finally declared, feeling like an idiot.

“Thank you,” the woman, Vicky, replied by wrote. 

After another long, awkward pause, Bucky moved to sit in one of the chairs so that he was sitting instead of looming, and the couple found seats of their own.

Bucky wasn’t sure how to talk with normal people anymore. Especially normal people who had experienced a loss which _wasn’t_ directly caused by him. Or his other. _Same thing_. Whatever.

Rhodes didn’t return during the painfully quiet moments which followed, but the silence was eventually interrupted by a quiet _mew_.

“ _Clint_ ,” Bucky sighed as soon as he heard the plaintive cry for help.

“Clint?” Richard repeated. “I thought he’d been renamed Screw Nut?”

“The cat's name is still being debated,” Bucky informed them as he stood. “Clint is one of the other idiots staying in the tower right now. He likes to climb around in the walls and vents, and that furry little menace has somehow figured out how to get into them as well. But then he can’t get out and-”

Bucky popped one of the vents from the ceiling, and suddenly the little furball was right there, crying as if he were mortally injured rather than simply stuck inside a vent.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Bucky grumbled as he reached up and helped the cat down from the ceiling. “You’re fine. I know for a fact that FRIDAY keeps the heater from turning on whenever you’re running around up there. Come on, you little brat.”

Despite his words, Bucky carefully ran his flesh hand over the cat's legs and sides just to _make sure_. There were no open wounds, misplaced bones, or strange bumps present. Just soft fur and well-healed scar tissue.

“Oh,” Vicky gasped, her hand going to her mouth. “He looks so _good!_ ”

Bucky blinked, because the cat’s fur was still patchy, he was still underweight, and he’d developed some sort of infection in the past couple days which caused gunk to drip from his eyes. The cat was kind of a disgusting mess.

Richard sadly chuckled at Bucky’s incredulous expression. “We told Alisha she couldn’t have him, at first. The way he was, we thought he’d die as soon as we got him home and she…”

“It seems like Tony spent a lot of time and energy making sure that didn’t happen,” Bucky told them, running his flesh hand over the warped skin on the cat’s side as the little guy butted his head against Bucky’s metal hand a few times. Then, he hopped off of Bucky’s lap and trotted over to the couple on the couch across from him, immediately rubbing against their legs and letting them pet his head.

Bucky chuckled as they cooed over him. “He’s not usually this friendly with people. He must remember you.”

Vicky gave a quiet sob. “That can’t be right. We wouldn’t touch him,” she told Bucky. “We thought he’d make us sick. We went to the shelter three different times hoping she’d pick a different cat, but she saw him and that was it. She said he was… he was as messed up as she was…”

“What?” Bucky asked with a frown.

“Alisha tried committing suicide six months before the… before the accident. Her therapist suggested she might find comfort and satisfaction from a pet, a therapy animal. We didn’t think it would work. Our neighbor had cats, and my mother has a dog, and she never showed any real interest in any of them, but… The day we picked up Rupert from the shelter was the happiest I’d seen her in years.”

“Oh,” Bucky murmured as the little cat trotted back over to him and jumped onto his metal arm.

With a deep breath, Richard said, “Could you tell Mr. Stark thank you for us? We just… I took the promotion, so we’re moving to Texas. We’ll be closer to our son as well as the rest of our family, and… We were packing up Alisha’s room, and we found the supplies she bought for Rupert. We thought that he might…”

“Thank you,” Bucky told them. “We’ll… We’ll take good care of him.”

With one last nod and another watery smile, the couple left.

Rhodes returned five minutes later. “I’m sorry, FRIDAY can usually tell me where he is but Screw Nut - hey. Where did they go?”

“Texas,” Bucky replied as he coaxed the cat into purring a bit louder than he had been a moment before.

“But… I thought they were going to take him with them,” Rhodes said.

“We need him more,” Bucky replied.

* * *

“An emotional support animal?” Steve questioned as he tentatively scratched at the little cat’s neck. The cat arched into the motion of Steve’s hand, then leapt off the couch, because the couch simply wasn’t comfortable enough for him. Instead of lounging on the plush, warm cushions, the cat found the television remote on the coffee table and contentedly sprawled across the glass surface with his head comfortably pillowed on the remote.

Bucky hummed. “Sam says that dogs are the most popular because they’re perceived as more friendly and outgoing, and because they can be trained as services animals. Cats are considered good emotional support animals as well, though. It makes sense. Whenever he’s nervous or upset, I become calm and collected because I don’t want to scare him off, you know? But he distracts me and gets me out of my own head when I’m upset, too. He’d not an instant cure-all or anything, but…”

“You’ve been better ever since we started staying at the tower,” Steve said with a nod. “And this situation with Tony… it’s been stressful, and I’m constantly worried, but having this little guy around has made it… tolerable. You wouldn’t think he’d have that effect on us, especially since he was so stand-offish towards most of us the first few days, but…”

Steve and Bucky sat quietly for a moment, partially paying attention to the movie which was playing on the television screen in front of them, and partially paying attention to their friends’ antics with the cat. 

“The girl, the one who adopted him from the shelter, I mean? She told her parents that she liked him so much because he was just as messed up as she was. And it’s horrible to think that, but my first night here? I was able to get comfortable because I was sympathizing with this guy about what he’d been through. I was able to talk about it, Steve.”

Steve perked up at this, sitting up a little straighter. “You mean… You were able to talk about your time with Hydra?”

Bucky nodded. “Some of it, at least. I was able to talk about Hydra, and my arm, and even a bit about the time before all that. I was able to talk about it like it wasn’t even nothing.”

* * *

Steve suspected that it was some sort of noise within the movie’s musical score which was disturbing the cat, but that didn’t change the fact that every time they replayed the part of the movie with the dog-mutant-creature, the cat’s eyes comically widened in response to the alien monster. 

They’d been replaying the clip for half an hour, and it didn’t look like they’d be finishing the movie anytime soon.

Instead, Clint and Sam were taking recordings of the cat as they replayed the scene over and over, making sure to get the _perfect_ angle of the cat’s expression as he went from drowsy and on the verge of sleep, to tense and alert with wide eyes that made him look more _offended_ than scared or startled, and then gradually back to yawning and lethargic.

It was better than ruminating on the fact that Scott had reported another dead end on the search for Tony that day.

* * *

Vision, Rhodey, and Bucky were the only people who were allowed to touch or handle the cat as they pleased. Everyone else had to wait for the cat to approach them on his own terms.

The little guy rarely tried to cuddle with Hope - whenever he sat on her lap, she didn’t seem to notice he was there, simply continuing her work as if cats took up space on her legs all the time. Steve noticed that the cat usually went to her when he didn’t want to be otherwise bothered.

He was tolerant of Clint and Wanda’s attempts to play or cuddle, but only up to a point, and only when he was in the right mood. They had quickly learned that when the cat's tail began to whip from side to side, it meant that the claws were only moments from making an appearance.

The first time the cat willingly cuddled up to Steve, he suspected that it was only because he was eating chicken at the time. The cat crept up to him, playing coy and rubbing his side against Steve’s leg before jumping into Steve’s lap. He then spent several long moments pretending that it was Steve’s attention he wanted, and just when Steve was starting to believe that the cat genuinely wanted a bit of affection, a claw darted out, snatched a good sized chunk of chicken off of Steve’s plate, and then suddenly the cat and half of Steve’s meal were both gone.

Clint, who had been avidly watching the proceedings, blatantly pointed at Steve and laughed.

* * *

Natasha and Scott reported that they’d found Tony after he had been missing for a month.

The rest of the team immediately suited up and set out to get him back. They met up with the pair in Pennsylvania, near a group of warehouses. 

“Look, we don’t want to get everyone all worked up and worried, but something’s wrong,” Scott told them after a plan of attack had been established.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked, the bottom of his stomach falling out.

Natasha and Scott met eyes, and then, her lips thinning, Natasha gave the report. “This organization was one of the first outfits we looked into. We knew they were doing some heavy shit, but Tony was our priority so we flagged them down to deal with later. But we didn’t think they had Tony.”

“Why not?” Rhodes asked through clenched teeth, vibrating with the need to get on with rescuing his friend already but understanding the need to fully discuss the situation first.

“SUNDAY,” was Scott's simple reply. “A whole slew of the people who work at this place carry StarkTech, or they have SUNDAY installed in one of the devices they use.”

“And Tony wrote coding into SUNDAY which would recognize certain spoken phrases and tapped patterns as distress signals,” Rhodes instantly knew.

“He could have activated the signal at any time - while he was still in transit after being picked up from the tower, even,” Natasha said with a nod.

“And,” Scott ominously added.

“And when our search eventually led us to this location for a second time,” Natasha supplied before anyone could smack Scott, “we did much more thorough research on the operation. We were able to dig up a few memos which blatantly referenced kidnapping Tony, and we were able to discern their plan. We discovered that Tony was never supposed to be brought here, to this location. This place is a prison, mostly used to observe the long-term effects of AIM’s experiments on human subjects. When they took Tony, the plan was to get Tony out of the country and locked up in a research facility in South America.”

“But something went wrong,” Hope finished. “Something went wrong to keep Tony from activating SUNDAY’s distress signal, and something made them bring him here instead of taking him to their facilities outside of the US.”

“We’re getting him, _now_ ,” Rhodes seethed.

An hour later, after sneaking into the facility, rescuing all of the people they could without being detected, and then fighting their way out after they were inevitably discovered, the team had Tony on the quinjet and they were headed back to New York.

“No,” Tony said, shivering violently as he shook his head and looked at them with wide eyes. “No, I’m not Tony. I’m Electric Boogaloo.”

* * *

“AIM had no delusions about their ability to imprison and hold Tony Stark,” Everett Ross reported, his expression solum as he explained what his men had discovered in the AIM facilities they had taken. “The gun they used against Stark was essentially meant to function as a brain transplant device. Their plan was to kidnap Tony Stark, remove his mind from his body, and then place his mind into the body of one of their own men. That man’s consciousness was supposed to be placed inside of Tony Stark’s body. Tony Stark was supposed to be imprisoned in an AIM research facility _and_ in another person’s body. Meanwhile, the man in Tony Stark’s body would feign an escape from his captors, make his way to Stark Tower, and he would use Stark’s biological signature to gain access to the tower, Stark’s workshops, _everything_. The plan fell apart because even though AIM successfully created a device to perform the mind-transplant, they didn’t think to test the expiration date on the device’s… storage container.”

“The _storage container_?” Spider-Man slowly repeated.

Everett nodded, his grimace larger than life on his projected image. “When they realized something was wrong, the AIM scientists immediately began researching what that something was, and from the notes we found… It looks like the container they were using to hold the consciousness of a person only remained effective for about twenty minutes before losing all potency. The man whose mind was to be swapped with Tony’s Stark’s in now a vegetable, as the device was used on him the morning of the operation, and his consciousness apparently dissipated several hours before the men even moved to apprehend Stark, and the storage container was completely ineffective after the other man’s consciousness had dissipated. As a result, when they used the device against Stark during the kidnapping, there was no containment device for his concious and the mind-transfer was… instantaneous.” 

“So then,” Scott said slowly, “if Electric Boogaloo has been in Tony’s body this entire time, then that means…”

His expression once again screwing up in distataste, Everett said, “He named his cat Electric Boogaloo?”

“At one phase during the healing process, the cat was prone to seizures,” Vision explained.

“Wait, _that’s_ why he was called Electric Boogaloo?” Spider-Man squawked.

“I’d tell you the story behind Screw Nut,” Rhody dryly replied, “but Hope’s lawyers have advised us against using certain language around you until after you’re over the age of 17.”

“I thought his original name, Reginald, was-”

“His original name was Rupert,” Bucky sighed.

“ _Rupert_?” Vision repeated. “What kind of name is _Rupert_?” 

“How do we fix this?” Steve loudly asked. “Tell me, _please_ , how we can get Tony back, because we _clearly_ need for him to be here and of sound mind so that he can settle the dispute in regards to that cat’s damn name.”

“My name is Electric Boogaloo,” Tony’s small voice said from just outside the conference room’s door. 

With a put upon sigh, Everett told them, “We’ve confiscated the weapon AIM used against Mr. Stark, and it’s being transported to Stark Tower as we speak.”

* * *

Electric Boogaloo didn’t like being a human, and he was very vocal about this fact. The moment he found his cat body, he began attempting to return his consciousness to his original form. These attempts meant that Electric Boogaloo would lift Cat-Tony until their foreheads were touching, and every time it didn’t work Electric Boogaloo would simply try it again.

Tony was very patient during Electric Boogaloo’s attempts, allowing the human cat to manhandle him every which way and keep him in a clinging grasp, purring all the while.

“So Mr. Stark’s been here the entire time?” Spider-Man asked as they watched the cat which was occupying their human friend’s body run his beard over Tony-Cat’s side while Tony-Cat patiently laid spread out on the couch. “Why didn’t he let us know?”

“Their consciousness switched, but it doesn’t seem like their mind’s processing power went with them,” Hope suggested. “That poor cat has been cursed with Tony’s ability to use reason and logic for the past month, and Tony has been operating on feline instinct.”

“Does that mean we can’t retaliate for the times he clawed or bit us?” Clint asked.

“That’s exactly what it means,” Hope dryly responded. 

“Do you think he’ll remember everything that’s happened?” Bucky quietly asked.

“Probably,” Hope said with a nod. “Electric Boogaloo seems to remember _his_ life as a cat. Now he simply has a greater understanding of everything which occurred to him and everything he’s seen.”

The group was saved from further contemplation of the issue when Friday informed them that Ross’ men had arrived with AIM’s technology. The key to a solution obtained, the team set to work repairing the mind-transfer gun so that they could return Eebee to his own body and get their friend back.

* * *

“You with us?” Rhodey quietly asked, concern showing in his eyes as he watched a disoriented Stark blink awake and start trying to sit up.

They knew he _was_ with them when Tony muttered, “Oh my god, _thumbs_ ,” in the same tone of voice he usually used when going after a fresh cup of coffee.

“ _T_ _humbs_ were what you missed most while you were a cat?” Rhodey wryly asked as he raised the back of the medical bed Stark was reclining in so that he was sitting upright.

“I guess?” Tony muttered as he continued to take stock of his body, flexing and stretching his arms and legs. “I wasn’t really self aware, so I didn’t understand that I used to be a human and I should have been a human still, but at the same time I was always surprised when I’d try to do something and didn’t have any thumbs. The last month has been _surreal_.”

“I’ll bet,” Rhodey told his friend. “We’ve been real worried about you. Let Helen finish looking you over and then we’ll move you to your room. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been held prisoner for the past month, but also like I’ve just woken up from the most _amazing_ nap. I slept _so well_ when I was a cat, Rhodey. I slept _so well_.” 

Tony looked truly upset at the prospect of no longer being able to cat-nap, and Rhodey’s expression was incredulous as he attempted to soothe his friend.

* * *

Steve and his team had spent a month getting comfortable and cozy in the tower, and they’d even managed to build some report with Tony’s new team. It was unsettling that so much had changed and they had once again come together as a team, yet they now found themselves in the exact same position as they were a month ago: Steve and the others were anxiously waiting for the opportunity to give Tony Stark a proper apology, and they fully expected Tony to kick them out on their asses.

“I was very angry, for a very long time” Tony informed them after they had said their piece and made their apologies. “I’m not proud of it, but there were times when I would contemplate ways to hurt you the way you and hurt me… Now… When I remember that anger, I also remember sneaking into your rooms and peeing all over the place.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Hope muttered as she put her face in her hands.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed with a cringe. “I mean, I _try_ to remember that anger, but I only ever manage to feel _really_ embarrassed.”

In his seat beside Hope, Scott began to snort with poorly withheld laughter. When Tony began smiling through the embarrassment clear in his expression, Rhodey began to chuckle as well. Before they knew it, the lot of them were laughing and something in Steve’s chest lifted. It felt _good_ to laugh with his friends after all the time he’d spent thinking that they would never laugh again.

When the laughter subsided and the _ridiculousness_ of the situation began to wear away, Steve cleared his throat in order to gain attention and reinsert a serious tone to the conversation. “We really _are_ sorry, Tony. If I could, I would go back and punch myself in the face, and I’d do _everything_ differently. I can’t, though, so… All I can do is promise that in the future, I’ll never fight you the way I did before. I’ll talk with you, instead. I’ll work with you.”

“Alright, yeah,” Tony agreed. “And I won’t pee on your favorite workout clothes.”

Steve sighed as Tony thoroughly ruined the mood, but he joined in on the laughter which once again began to sound about the room instead of scolding Tony for his light-hearted response to Steve’s genuine contriteness. After all, Steve _didn’t_ want to fight. He would much rather laugh.

* * *

During his time at the tower, Bucky had grown used to fussing over the cat. Taking care of something else had given him more confidence in taking care of himself. 

After discovering that he had been chumming around with Tony Stark trapped in a cat's body, Bucky was shaken. 

The drama of rescuing Stark and getting him and Eebee back to their proper bodies had kept Bucky on his toes and busy. Then, Bucky was consumed by his nerves when it came to actually interacting with Tony Stark. Their first afternoon with the man in the tower, Bucky watched Stark like a hawk. He was aware of the man's location at every moment, and he took note whenever Stark so much as twitched. 

Then, after the team as a whole sat down for their first dinner since the Avengers were reunited and Tony was rescued, Bucky escaped into the kitchen to soothe his nerves by engaging in the familiar task of washing dishes. It was a simple, mindless task which made Bucky feel normal and calm. 

Then, just as he was finishing up, Eebee jumped onto the counter beside Bucky to sniff at the faucet and lick at droplets of water which clung to the side of the now-empty sink. After drying his hands on a towel, Bucky moved to scoop the cat under his metal arm to carry him out of the room. At Bucky's movement, Eebee startled and jumped away from Bucky, gracelessly falling off the counter and then darting out of the kitchen before Bucky could even process what had happened.

Because Eebee didn't _know_ Bucky. Eebee hadn't spent a month following Bucky around and begging for drops of milk or scraps of food. Eebee didn't nap against Bucky's metal arm. Eebee didn't ask for cuddles or pets by glaring at Bucky until Bucky figured out that cuddles and pets were what he wanted. Eebee didn't know Bucky _at all_.

And Bucky was left bereft. 

* * *

A few days latter, Steve found himself alone in the kitchen with Tony. 

Tony didn't seem hesitant or awkward as he said good morning to Steve and asked about his plans for the day, but _Steve_ felt awkward.

After he'd made himself some breakfast and joined Tony at the table, Steve quietly pressed, "Have you really forgiven me for everything?"

When Tony looked up from his table, his eyes were narrowed and he asked, "Why do I feel like you're trying to _start_ a fight, rather than resolve one? I told you - I'm not angry anymore." 

Steve thought about that - _really_ thought about it. One of the things he and the others had worked on while in Wakanda was _listening_ and _thinking_ before answering. There had been a lot of negative attitudes amongst the Rogues during those first few days, and Sam had taken to forcing them all to sit down and talk things out whenever tensions began to rise. And Steve realized _that_ was part of the problem. He'd recognized long ago that there had been major _communication_ problems amongst the Avengers from the very beginning, and certain habits and patters had formed amongst the team as a result.

"Fighting is what you and I have always done," Steve sadly informed Tony. "You say you're not angry, and I believe you, but only because I know what you look like when you're angry. You and I always fought even when we _weren't_ angry about anything. We drove the others crazy arguing about the _silliest_ things sometimes and I just... I have a difficult time believing that we've gotten over Siberia because we haven't _argued_ about Siberia." 

"We are such a mess," Tony sighed. 

Steve felt immediately defensive in response to Tony statement. Before... before _everything_ , Steve would have pointedly informed Tony of all the ways he _wasn't_ a mess. Scott had only been with the Rogues in Wakanda for a month before making a deal and returning to the US to sign the accords and work with Hope, but before leaving he had been involved in a few of their group arguments. At one point, Scott had pointedly informed him, _You might be the perfect man, but I'm not!_ Steve had been appalled by the statement, because he knew perfectly well he was _not_ perfect by any means, regardless of what the super soldier serum and his own press might advertise. It had only then that Steve began to realize that his defense of himself could seem like judgement and condemnation to others.

"Sam says it's not conducive to speak negatively," Steve told Tony instead of going on the defensive.

"Sam what now?" Tony asked, plainly confused by the non-sequitur. 

"When you say I'm a mess... It reminds me of the time after I initially came out of the ice, and I _was_ a mess. Everywhere I went, everything I did, I was confused and wrongfooted and scared. But I've come a long way since then. So when you say that, I have the urge to defend myself and talk about all the aspects of my life which I've taken control of and gotten a handle over. And it has come to my attention that when I do that, people interpret it as a judgement against them."

Tony blanched and said, "That's not what I meant at all."

"I know. But when you say things like that, it's where my mind immediately goes. Sam tells us not to use negative language to describe ourselves or a situation. We may be a mess, but we could be better. It's being better we need to put our energy into."

"But fighting is what we've always done," Tony wryly concluded.

"So it doesn't make sense to me that you've forgiven me. Just like _that,_ " Steve agreed.

"It didn't happen just like _that_ , though," Tony argued. "While I was in Eebee's body... I may have been a cat with a cat mind, but it happened sometime during all of that."

His nose scrunching up in distaste, Steve argued, "You might be embarrassed about peeing on our clothes, but I don't believe for a moment that fixes anything." 

"Of course not," Tony said with a roll of his eyes. "But other things happened too... On the team's first night back in the tower, Bucky told me something you'd said to him. You said he was your best friend, but I was the best person you knew."

A flush rose to Steve's face at these words. He'd told Bucky that while explaining why he wanted to work at returning back to the US after everything which had been said and done. Once the fighting was over and tempers had cooled, Steve immediately recognized that the fight had been a mistake. It had taken a while to admit as much out loud, however. He and the others had kept their heads down and mouths shut for the first couple of months. And when Steve had finally decided that he wanted to go home and was willing to do the work to make it happen, it had taken a bit of work to get the others on board. Bucky hadn't believed he'd be welcomed by the Avengers at all, and Steve had needed to explain why he would. 

"It's true," Steve admitted with a shrug. 

Tony looked just as awkward as Steve felt as he murmured, "I never thought you might feel that way."

"It took me a while to figure out, myself," Steve admitted. "But when I think about it... It's why even though we always fought and argued, I thought the fighting and arguing was worth it. At some point, I forgot that winning the fight wasn't the most important part of it, and I took it to far."

"Yeah, well... I probably took it so hard because you're the best person I know, too," Tony muttered to his tablet. 

For the first time since returning to the US and taking up residence in the tower again, Steve felt hope bloom in his chest. "We can do better, then," he proposed, holding his hand out to Tony.

"We'll do better," Tony agreed with a firm handshake, and Steve was delighted by the grin which spread across Tony's face. 

* * *

Eebee the cat was nothing like Tony the cat. 

Eebee didn't bite or scratch people the way Tony-cat had. Eebee was far less discerning when it came to which Avenger he spent time cuddling with on the couch. Eebee was also very _loud_. He meowed _constantly_ , crying for food, or attention, or when he thought a room was too quiet. Eebee didn't cuddle with electronics, he wasn't territorial over the coffee machine, and he hissed at Bucky's metal arm the first time he was sitting near it when the arm's internal gears began to shift.

Eebee was notably more energetic than Tony-cat had been, as well. Eebee was constantly exploring. Whenever someone opened a cabinet or a drawer, the cat would appear seemingly out of nowhere in order to crawl into the space which was revealed and look around. Whenever someone went out onto the balcony or used one of the stairwells, they had to keep an eye out for the cat to make sure he didn't make a break for it. Taking the cat out for daily walks was mandatory, or else Eebee would cry and scratch at the elevator and exist in a general state of misery for _hours_. 

Eebee was cute, and fun, and a joy to be around, but Bucky missed the lazy, moody cat which blatantly favored him and allowed itself to be carried around. 

Bucky especially missed the cat in the evenings, when he was trying to get to sleep. He and the cat would cuddle up on one of the couches facing windows in the common area, and they would watch night-time fall over the city. Bucky would watch the lights and life all around while the cat's purring lulled him to sleep.

Bucky still settled into that couch most evenings. Sometimes, Eebee would join him if Bucky lured the cat over with a toy and then wore out the cat by playing with some string or feathers, but most of the time, Bucky sat alone.

Then, one night, Tony Stark wandered up from his workshop. He was plainly worn and tired after a long day of work, and he plopped onto the couch next to Bucky with a tired sigh. They sat in silence for several moments. And then, Tony declared, "I love New York at night. Nothing makes me feel less alone than watching all that life in the dark."

Bucky's only reply was a quiet grunt, but he silently agreed.

Bucky expected that Stark would make his way to his own bedroom before long, but it was less than five minutes before the man was slouched over the armrest of the couch and gently snoring. Bucky fully intended to surrender the couch to the sleeping genius and bunk in Steve's room for the night. 

But then it was morning. Bucky awoke with Stark's legs spilling across his lap as Eebee slept curled on the man's stomach. Bucky tried to be careful as he moved Stark's legs so that he could stand from the couch, but one of Eebee's eyes cracked open and Bucky was treated to an accusing glare. Bucky moved more slowly as he gently lowered Stark's legs down on the couch. 

Bucky had just finished putting on a pot of coffee when Stark came into the kitchen, stretching as he declared, "I haven't slept so well since I was a cat!"

"Me neither," Bucky found himself grumbling aloud. 

Stark's tone was joking as he said, "Maybe it wasn't because I was a cat, but because I was near you!"

Bucky's responding chuckle was delivered mechanically, out of politeness, but he was already thinking up ways to recreate the situation. 

He wondered if he could get away with using Eebee in his attempts.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple years ago, I decided that I was going to write ALL of the generic tropes - A coffee-shop AU, one where people don't know Iron Man's identity, deaging, time travel, etc. etc. Well this was the obligatory Person-Turned-Into-A-Cat story! I also really like the idea of the Avengers having pets. My one complaint about the Marvel Movies is that there aren't enough talking/flying animal side-kicks. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!


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